Feed the 5000 Biennial opening night Independent District

	Jane Hughes Myrtle Group Liverpool Biennial 2004

	Steve Gent Urban Liverpool Biennial 2004

	Tom Murphy Journeys Liverpool Biennial 2004

David Alker and Peter Liddell

Independent District

Greenland Street

Record Collection: The Fall

Nostalgia for Manchester’s musical heritage haunts the collaborative art of David Alker and Peter Liddell. The Smiths, New Order and The Fall are recalcitrant predecessors to shake off, casting a long shadow over the city’s culture vultures.

The exceptionally diverse and prolific output of Manchester’s premier avant-garde songwriter and anti-fashionista Mark E. Smith represents Manchester’s most indomitable independence of thought. Despite (and because of) international acclaim, hip priest Smith refuses to leave his home town of Prestwich, situated to the north of Manchester; and is, to say the least, very sceptical of slick corporate Britain.

The lyrics and record sleeves devised by Morrissey for The Smiths represent a particularly nostalgic view of Northern Englishness. Morrissey’s great passion for the vernacular is filtered through 1960s British New Wave films such as Billy Liar and the frozen semblance of Mancunian working class community perpetrated by Britain’s longest running soap opera Coronation Street.

Former local miserabilists turned into international techno legends, New Order would appear to represent the opposite set of values. Yet, New Order are only superficially modern. Factory Records sleeves designed by Peter Saville in the 1980s drew heavily on modernist graphic design of te 1920s and 30s, creating a retrofuturist postmodern style, one that was mixed effortlessly with a concurrent neo-classical revival.

New Order themselves remained wedded to the city, investing much of their profits back into ventures such as the Hacienda nightclub. All of these artists are an integral part of the folklore and cultural instincts of the city, and can even by found incorporated into displays in the Manchester Art Gallery.

Alker and Liddell pay homage to these artists by painting their record sleeves on fragile English cream crackers, a means of marking their entry into cosy heritage culture while reminding us of their brittle avant-gardism.

Like Halliwell’s rolling circles inside circles, such reproduction of cultural history is exponential to the rate of consumption.

Extract from exhibition essay by curator Dr Neil Mulholland